Norbert Wiener

The following contains excerpts from two of Norbert Wiener's books: "I am a Mathematician"[IaM] and "The Human Use of Human Beings"[HUHB]. Written some 50 years ago, these books contain insightful observations and valuable implications for changes in human thinking and behavior that we are still wrestling with as a society.

See also the letter Wiener wrote after meeting and chatting with Einstein in 1925:
http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/wiener-letter/

On being a scientist

"A scientist must know what is being done in order that the very individuality of his own work may come to full fruition. He must live in a world where science is a career, where he has companions with whom he can talk and in contact with whom he may bring out his own vein." [IaM,p.360]

"This greatest single example of the art of decoding is the decoding of the secrets of Nature itself and is the province of the scientist." [HUHB,p.124]

"Properly speaking the artist, the writer, and the scientist should be moved by such an irresistible impulse to create, that even if they were not being paid for their work, they would be willing to pay to get the chance to do it." [HUHB, p.133]

"What sometimes enrages me and always disappoints and grieves me is the preference of great schools of learning for the derivative as opposed to the original, for the conventional and thin which can be duplicated in many copies rather than for universal newness and beauty, wherever it may be seen. Moreover, I protest, ..., against the ax which has been put to the root of originality..." [HUHB, p.135]

On the Role of the University

"This is an age in which the profit motive is exalted, often, indeed, to the exclusion of all other motives. The value of ideas to the community is estimated in terms of dollars and cents, yet dollars and cents are fugitive currency compared with that of new ideas. ...
Like a tradition of scholarship, a grove of sequoias may exist for thousands of years, and the present crop of wood represents the investment of sun and rain many centuries ago. ...
There are scientific ideas which we can trace clearly to the time of Leibniz, a quarter of a millennium ago, which are just beginning to find their applications to industry. Can a business firm or a government department, moved primarily by the immediate needs for new weapons [or bio-tech products], compass this period of time in its backward glance?
The great grove of science must be left to long-time institutions capable of formulating and maintaining long-time values.
...
These long-time institutions cannot and do-not ask for an immediate translation of their hopes and ideals into the small change of the present day. They exist on faith, the faith that the development of knowledge is a goos thing and must ultimately conspire in the good of all men. ...
A policy which integrates the gifts of the intellect into a long-time policy must transcend the lifetime of short-time institutions such as everyday business, and must be transferred to more stable institutions, like the foundations and the universities, which at least contemplate such a continued existence. ..." [IaM, pp.361-363]

On Economics

"I am writing this book primarily for Americans in whose environment questions of information will be evaluated according to a standard American criterion: a thing is valuable as a commodity for what it will bring in the open market. This is the official doctrine of an orthodoxy which it is becoming more and more perilous for a resident of the United States to question." [HUHB,p.113]

"[The man in the street] considers that information which has been developed in the laboratories of his own country is morally the property of that country; and that the use of this information by other nationalities not only may be the result of treason, but intrinsically partakes of the nature of theft. He cannot conceive of a piece of information without an owner." [HUHB,p.120]

References

[IaM] "I am a Mathematician", Norbert Wiener.
The MIT Press paperback edition, Aug. 1964, Fifth printing Dec. 1981. Orignal edition completed on Washington's Birthday, 1955; copyright 1956.

[HUHB] "The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society", Norbert Wiener.
The Da Capo Press paperback edition - an unabridged replication of the edition published in Boston (Houghton Mifflin) in 1954; copyright 1950, 1954.

dd@space.mit.edu 26 Sept. 2005